


Terce

by sophiagratia



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Religious Themes & References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-15
Updated: 2011-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bareil gives a sermon. Kira listens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terce

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re disturbed by the idea of religion and eroticism in the same place, this is probably not for you. I intend neither blasphemy nor offence, but I also realize that when it comes to your beliefs, my intentions are probably irrelevant.
> 
> N.B. that Bareil’s sermon is actually an excerpt from Augustine’s _Confessions_ [11.28]. The passage is spliced in the story, so if you want to read it all at one go first (it’s short and, I promise, gorgeous), you can do that: it's in the endnotes. I have used John K. Ryan's translation (Image Books, 1960) [[amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Saint-Augustine-Image-Book/dp/0385029551/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279546881&sr=8-8)], which I have slightly altered in consultation with the Loeb and to smooth away Augustine’s masculine default in the final lines. Note that the terms here translated as ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ are both rendered in the Latin by ‘anima’. I’ve preserved the bifurcation, because I like the ambiguity and no English word quite does it (‘spirit’ comes close, but not close enough). Enough geekery for you? Okay!

_But how is the future, which as yet does not exist, diminished or consumed, or how does the past, which no longer exists, increase, unless there are three things in the mind, which does all this?_

She kneels in the temple, listening. She watches her hands as she listens. The vedek’s sonorous voice is the sonorous voice of her lover. This morning, he practiced this sermon as her hands ran over his chest. She pressed a kiss to his throat to feel his voice in her lips.

 _The mind looks forward, it considers, it remembers, so that the reality to which it looks forward passes through what it considers into what it remembers._

He is coming to the end, now. To her favorite part, the part they composed together, reciting and revising aloud, call and response in a tangle of bedclothes. She crawls inside his sermons with him because it’s one way to be close to him. That doesn’t mean she thinks he’s not wrong.

He sees time in a line. He should know better. She suggested ‘consumed’ instead of ‘diminished,’ and feigned anger when he accepted, then diluted it. She likes ‘increase’ and ‘passes through,’ but forward and backward are still wrong and she’ll let him know it.

She watches her hands, listening.

 _Who, then, denies that future things are not yet existent? Yet there is already in the mind an expectation of things to come._

She tries to repress an indecorous smile. She rails against him, sure. She picks fights over prophecies. But his theology excites her. His voice vibrates inside her.

He is her expectation.

 _Who denies that past things no longer exist? Yet there is still in the soul the memory of past things._

And what of the body, Vedek Bareil? And the past is more than memory, Vedek Bareil. This is where they will fight, later. This is where she will stake out the trench-lines of her initial arguments.

Oh, she’ll be coy about it. He never expects her to be coy, and so she gains the advantage of him every time. She’ll walk with him across the monastery’s grounds in the cool metallic sunlight of this autumn morning, and she’ll smile with praise for his delivery and, laughing, gossip about this or that member of the congregation. In his bright, austere rooms, she’ll run a hand with casual affection across the back of his neck. Curling up by the window with her raktajino, she’ll loosen the wrap of her dress, exposing her clavicle. She’ll watch him watch her, and she’ll smile, and then she’ll say, ‘The past is more than memory, Antos,’ and he’ll miss a beat and then laugh.

 _Who denies that present time lacks spatial extent, since it passes away in an instant?_

The problem of presence is related to the problem of the body, but in a way that she can never articulate and so she always loses this point. She cannot explain her position on this, and she fears that if she could it would lie on the border of blasphemy.

Instead, she will show him, extending her body over his, what presence is, how it can both pass away in an instant and endure irreducibly. She will show him, too, and again, how time encodes itself in the body as in the soul and the mind.

 _Yet attention abides, and through it what shall be present proceeds to become something absent. It is not, then, future time that is long, but a long future is a long expectation of the future. Nor is past time, which is not, long, but a long past is a long memory of the past._

She knows a long memory. That’s certain. As for a future — he is her expectation. She expects his voice, as she remembers it.

Her heart beats faster: he’s coming to the best of it. Her mind extends over the words he has spoken and those he is about to speak. The mind is active in time. On this, they agree.

She looks around, at all the attentive kneelers, their rapt faces. And some of their eyes are on her. Suspicious, some, and some wryly admiring, their eyes are on her because they believe the vedek’s lover teaches him more than he reveals. She permits herself a proud but private grin.

 _I am about to recite a psalm that I know._

* * *

‘Here’s the thing,’ she said, the first time she let him stay, catching his hands in hers when they strayed beneath her latticed shirt. ‘I want you, Antos. I want you to undress me. But you are about to see a scar. A very big scar. Don’t gasp and don’t recoil and don’t ask me why I haven’t had it removed, or you’ll be on your ass in the corridor and I promise you’ll never see it again. Deal?’

He didn’t smile indulgently or ruffle her hair or coo platitudes. He didn’t try to comfort her, because he understood that that was not the point. He looked her in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’

Later, as they tangled together and she laughed in pleasure, he grew serious. He cupped her cheek and kissed her firmly. Then he ducked his head and ran his tongue along the whole length of the scar, from its source on her back at the base of her ribcage, across the breach at her sternum to the narrow delta that fanned over the right end of her clavicle. There, he closed his teeth on her skin.

She cried out and clamped her legs around his waist.

* * *

 _I am about to recite a psalm that I know._

She allows herself the full breadth of her smile, now. This is where she loves him most, this thing about the psalm.

She should refine her argument about memory. It’s not that the past is not only memory. It’s something else. Something like: memory is the presence of the past. In this case, in the body. This memory – his tongue, her thighs, that cry – is very much present in her body, here, now. A fine thing, that those suspicious onlookers can’t hear her thoughts. The Kai, for one, would keel over.

If she wanted to win quickly, with one cheap shot, she would say: the man who licked this scar to make me come can’t say that past things no longer exist. They exist in the body, Antos, she could say, leaning lightly to let her dress show the delta, and win. But she won’t.

 _Before I begin, my expectation extends over the entire psalm._

It’s the word he chose for her, when she had finished showing him the rest of her scars. He remarked on the one that was missing, on her left hand. That was close to asking, but in her delight she let it pass. She said, a little embarrassed, ‘I like to think of them as inscriptions.’ He only nodded seriously, and asked if she thought he might learn to read them. ‘Like a psalm, Nerys.’ He was either joking, she thought, or blaspheming, and she told him so. ‘And what is a sacred act if not this?’ He had a point, and he proceeded to argue it well.

She feels his expectation, now, in his voice. And she remembers his voice, last night: ‘my expectation extends over the psalm,’ and his eyes on her skin. In the temple, now, a flush runs the whole length of her.

 _Once I have begun, my memory extends over as much of it as I shall separate off and assign to the past._

There’s a finality to that that cools her flush. She remembers not to shake her head, here, publicly. She will fight, later. Perhaps it only comes down to this: she feels presence more strongly than he does, and so the past sticks to her. Her strong feeling, perhaps, attracts the past. Perhaps, after all this arguing, it’s a question not of theology but of feeling.

Antos would say – though perhaps Vedek Bareil would not – that the distinction is not so significant.

She closes her eyes: if she’s going to vaunt her sensibility of presence, she should at least be wholly present for this, which she loves.

 _The life of this action of mine is distended into memory by reason of the part I have spoken and into forethought by reason of the part I am about to speak. But attention is actually present and that which was to be is borne along by it so as to become past. The more this is done and done again, so much the more is memory lengthened by a shortening of expectation, until the entire expectation is exhausted. When this is done the whole action is completed and passes into memory. What takes place in the whole psalm takes place also in each of its parts and in each of its syllables. The same thing holds for a longer action, of which perhaps the psalm is a small part. The same thing holds for an entire life, the parts of which are all the actions in that life. The same thing holds throughout the whole age of the world, the parts of which are the lives of men and of women._

This is the stroke of genius, and she can’t claim any part of it. Text and life. _The whole psalm in each of its syllables_. She loves him for that. And then the apocalypse, at the end: the full life of the universe, in each of its parts. Beginning and ending and each sequent action, all at once in each part. Each thing suffusing every other thing, absolute plenitude. Yes.

That is how she will resolve the fight: she will recite scraps of this, and she will tell him that it is beautiful, and that here, they agree. This is where they can begin, next time. She will kiss him and say, _the whole in each of its parts_ , and she will place his hands on her hips, and he will forget to keep arguing.

And now the psalm, which they all sing together. Music enhances this quality of multitemporality, she thinks. Rhythm carries you in multiple times; melody, too. War songs still flash in her mind, at the end of services. The words and the tunes are different, but the drums are the same. The past is not only memory.

They begin to sing. For a moment, as she lends her voice to the collective, she forgets herself.

In a moment, the service will end; the congregation will shuffle to their feet; she will find idle conversation to make while Antos greets them by the door. Later, in his rooms, they will fight. After, he will undress her.

‘I am about to recite a psalm that I know,’ he will whisper against her skin.

Singing, in the temple, a flush washes over her once more. The future, too, is encoded in the body.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Augustine, _Confessions_ 11.28:
> 
> But how is the future, which as yet does not exist, diminished or consumed, or how does the past, which no longer exists, increase, unless there are three things in the mind, which does all this? It looks forward, it considers, it remembers, so that the reality to which it looks forward passes through what it considers into what it remembers. Who, then, denies that future things are not yet existent? Yet there is already in the mind an expectation of things to come. Who denies that past things no longer exist? Yet there is still in the soul the memory of past things. Who denies that present time lacks spatial extent, since it passes away in an instant? Yet attention abides, and through it what shall be present proceeds to become something absent. It is not, then, future time that is long, but a long future is a long expectation of the future. Nor is past time, which is not, long, but a long past is a long memory of the past.
> 
> I am about to recite a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation extends over the entire psalm. Once I have begun, my memory extends over as much of it as I shall separate off and assign to the past. The life of this action of mine is distended into memory by reason of the part I have spoken and into forethought by reason of the part I am about to speak. But attention is actually present and that which was to be is borne along by it so as to become past. The more this is done and done again, so much the more is memory lengthened by a shortening of expectation, until the entire expectation is exhausted. When this is done the whole action is completed and passes into memory. What takes place in the whole psalm takes place also in each of its parts and in each of its syllables. The same thing holds for a longer action, of which perhaps the psalm is a small part. The same thing holds for an entire life, the parts of which are all the actions of that life. The same thing holds throughout the whole age of the world, the parts of which are the lives of men and of women.


End file.
